Trust me?

Do you trust her?

Right ever lead you a story?

Trust?

This is the truth, the only truth.

If anybody ever tells you to just trust them, don't welcome to trust me.

The podcast about cults, extreme belief and manipulation from two beauty junkies who've actually experienced it.

I am Lola Blanc and I am Megan Elizabeth.

Today our guest is Arabella Sicarti, author of the House of Beauty Lessons from the Image Industry.

We're going to discuss the ways that obsessing about beauty and stopping aging becomes a way of feeling in control of our lives when they feel out of control, the connection between Mormonism and plastic surgery, and why Utah has some of the highest rates in the country, and how beauty and power go hand in hand.

Yes, we will.

We'll get into Coco Chanel's Nazi ties, how some of the scammer sides of beauty and the wellness industry can overlap, and why the healthiest way to engage with beauty is to prioritize connection with other people except when it comes to MLMs.

Indeed, before we get into it, do you have a cultiest thing of this week that you experienced.

You bet your boots, I do my boot.

You're okay.

So we're recording this a couple weeks in advance, so perhaps when you're listening to this, there will be new breaks in the story.

Right, but good disclaimer for to day.

What we know is that basically Tampa, Florida mega mansion they just discovered sixty people living inside of it.

And this is the same one we've talked about before, or no, this is a new one.

Okay, it's a new one.

So it's called the Kingdom of God Global Church.

It's still operating.

Actually, even though the two leaders of it have been taken to jail, they're still operating their twenty four hour prayer line.

Whoa like a phone like Allah?

And we've pulled in like fifty million dollars people working for free, people collapsing, water being poured on them to wake them up, which is actually something that did happen to me once.

What yeah, in what just like a wake up water being pored I mean there's.

Like in your sorority or no, in.

The two by two oh shit, and then the context of a convention.

Wow, it's a long story, okay, anyway.

Okay, So what's the This is obviously some kind of like church, like a religious cult.

It's a church.

It's a religious cult.

They've been using people like to work twenty four hours a day to raise money that these people have been using to buy luxury cars.

Jet skis a like two hundred and fifty thousand dollars SUV.

I don't even know what the purpose is.

And this the most interesting part to me that no one keeps expanding upon.

They just kind of drop it in there like it's no big deal.

Is that there's human sized statues in cages?

What?

Yeah are their photos?

Yeah?

WHOA.

I'm looking at Google images right now, and this mansion's crazy.

So the mansion is so big and I'm like sixty people.

It feels like that mansion could handle that.

It does seem like it's a This is a very large property that I'm looking at.

Yeah, I feel like they're just sticking the victims in like the great Enclosed Area something.

Oh my god.

So we I have people been into, Like how did it come out?

Do you know the FBI rated it.

I don't know if they got a tip.

I don't know what exactly happened, but I'm very interested to see how the story plays out.

And I'm very interested to see where this would have gone had it not stopped.

The human size statues and cages.

What the fuck?

Yeah yeah, I mean that feels like something's cooking.

Yeah.

Yeah, at least it's psychological torture of some kind or like, you know, trying to be menacing, Like there's something that's very ominous.

Yeah, well, I am looking for to learning more.

Yes, what about you?

It's your cult this thing of the week.

I was going through our trust Me email and phone hotline this week, which we have not done in I was gonna say, damn once we're back on top of it, y'all.

So if you want to share your story, please send us an email.

Gives a call.

But I've found like a.

Very like an older email from someone pitching a guest, and it was super interesting to me because this is a man who was a member of a woman led cult.

And maybe I won't say what it is because I don't know if i'll I want to identify this person, but there's a woman led cult that he had been speaking out about his experiences with, and I was like, oh, this sounds like a really interesting guest, Like I love when men are willing to share their stories because it's much harder to get them too.

But then I went to his Instagram page, and his Instagram page is all like why I'm not a feminist anymore, why you should be strong in your masculinity, very like Andrew Taty kind.

Of like a shiplash back from the class.

Yes, it's like what a fascinating I mean, like from the outside, obviously I don't know this person, but from the outside it very much looks like had a negative experience with one woman who abused her power and extrapolated upon that to then react and go with a complete opposite direction and be like, actually women should have no power, which is just like, so it's just so interesting.

This is just I mean, that is what we do as humans, you know, Like I reacted to my religious upbringing in which I believed really really hard by believing in absolutely nothing.

And sometimes I'm a little rigid in that people who come out of polygamy sometimes become so vehemently antipolygamy that they then are actually like against the victims of it because they're still in it for you know, like, we have such strong responses after we leave something, and I guess that's just like one of the things that have But it's so interesting to me how rare it is that we balance out and we're like.

Yeah, I guess that's why therapy is such a necessary part of the process, so that somebody can like hold space for radicalness maybe and then reflect it back to us and be like when we're ready to hear it, kind of be like, so here's what I'm seeing, because yeah, yeah, it's it's it's impossible to not repel, yeah, trauma.

And we overcorrect, Like that's just like I feel like that's just such a human thing.

We overcorrect, But damn I don't want to, like I don't want to like just flip flop and swing from one extreme to the other, you know, and it's.

Easier to do.

So yeah, yeah, that's that's a really interesting one.

So we're looking for a balance, we're looking for a moderation and self reflection, and we're looking for beauty and we're looking to be the most beautiful people alive.

Shall we talk to Ara about Let's do it.

Welcome Arabella Saicarti to trust me.

Thanks for having me excited to be here.

Thanks for being here.

Your book is so beautiful, it's written so well.

Nonfiction can of course be written very beautifully, but you don't always expect there to be this like poeticism, and I really appreciated that.

About it, so great job, Thank you.

So can you tell us a little bit about your really impressive background and what brought you to the subject of beauty.

So it all started because I was online way too much.

So I've been a writer working in the beauty space pretty much since my brain started for me, Like I started writing for magazines when I was like fourteen or fifteen, So I have many years in the industry at this point, and I split my time between New York and I and going other places for reporting on the beauty industry.

Sometimes I write about fashion and wellness, hospitality, but my bread and butter is the beauty industry, specifically around the connections between beauty and politics, so I do reporting around that.

I also run a nonprofit called the Museum of Nails Foundation, which is basically a digital first archive that documents now art now culture and tries to give beauty workers in the nail industry their flowers.

Because beauty workers are often uncredited and underappreciated.

Amazing, This is totally in aside.

But were you and Tavi Gevinson compared a lot?

Was that?

I don't know compared?

We grew up together, Like we were really really close friends when we were both teens, so they were Yeah, like I was part of the Rookie og staff, So.

You were a team.

Were you a team?

Is caat Marnel?

Is that in this world or not?

I came a couple of years later in like a little different wave.

Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, so Exo Vain came I guess after Rookie or maybe at the same time, but kind of different social bubbles.

Well, you have a really cool perspective on culture, beauty cults actually, as we discovered while reading this book, and one of the things that I found very amusing about your book was that you got super into beauty because of the fifth element.

Yeah, when she has the Chanel moment, and we can get into Chanel later and the problems that surround her.

But yeah, I was also extremely into beauty as a child to a degree.

That was very odd because we were both raised in cults, so I wasn't allowed to have makeup, I couldn't cut.

My hair had to be in buns.

But somehow I convinced my parents to get me like a magnified mirror in seventh grade and no, yeah, and it was like.

A ten time magnified mirror.

And I would just like, and I'm older than you, So this was like way before kids my age were even doing this.

But I was like really thinking.

About anti aging and like fourth grade and it's just really odd.

So I really related to a lot of your book and the way it just kind of creeps in there.

Yeah.

I think we were all obsessed with not wanting to die as children in some form or another.

Right, Yes, I mean I think you know, like those hotel magnifying mirrors that you can pull in and out.

Of course, I feel like they should be like criminalized.

I know.

I don't think that they should exist.

No, they just pause everyone to want to like hate themselves or book a hotel spat treatment because they're like, no one should be looking at their pores.

People, Oh my god, No, absolutely not.

So what are some of the obviously the fears that beauty praise upon.

You just mentioned one, which is the fear of death.

Can we talk about how this industry can kind of take advantage of some of our deepest anxieties.

Yeah, of course.

I mean one of my taglines or aphorisms, I would say it's like beauty is terror, but on the same side, or like a different side of the same coin.

It's also an active care and for a really long time, and kind of the guiding motive behind the book was that I wanted to trace the connection between terror, like the political form of terror, but also just the feeling women feel and people feel navigating the world in our bodies, always being judged, and see how it plays into all the different industries around us, not just the beauty industry, but how it's connected to every other industry there is, because all of our products are made of many different things and they are all connected in some form or another.

Yeah, I mean corporations and companies in general that are marketing anything to us by design have to make us feel inadequate or like there's something there's something missing from our lives and something that we need.

And obviously the beauty industry, it just makes it centered around ourselves and what is missing or wrong with us.

Yeah, and that moving goalpost, it never you never reach utopia.

It always always be hotter, so you can always be hotter.

Yeah, some of the.

Hottest women I know are the ones that are the most anxious about how they look all the time and being hotter.

I'm like, you're literally I would like die.

To because it's a disease.

It's a disease.

But I love in the book how you kind of go at it from both sides, where it is like something very dangerous and corruptible, but it's also such a beautiful way of connecting with people, and we can get to that more later.

You have a really perfect quote about it.

I also like how you call it like body hacking.

Can you tell us a bit more about what the term body hacking means?

So body hacking, at least in the framework of the book, it really refers to this impulse to let's call it like body optimization for the boys and the boyfriends of beauty girls.

It's basically doing a bunch of different things either to your body or different wellness things.

Might be surgical, it might not be where you are trying to either like live longer or like be a little healthier, be younger.

You know, all this anti aging stuff that we do or we're seeing pop up in different clinics, or the adaptogens or like the really fancy scientific founding skincare products GLP one.

All of these things they have to do with this impulse to try to delay death in some form or another, because the idea of being healthy has so much to do with just like staying homozomaly, like younger, because when you're younger, you have less chronic illnesses.

So much of the transhumanist movement pretty much is just about trying to stay alive and as young as scientifically possible.

Yeah.

I mean, honestly, Percella Pressley to me looks like she could run a marathon.

Yeah, like, and it's just like an illusion.

I'm like, she's she's young.

You know, it works on me.

I'm like, you're young.

Yeah.

Well, it's interesting talking about biohacking versus beauty.

I mean it almost seems like for men it's sort of outwardly named as life extension and like this idea of health or something, whereas for women or from people, it's more like the appearance of youth.

No, I totally agree with you.

It's definitely like gendered.

It's like it's like gender washed somehow.

These conversations and you can actually see this in like how different wellness spaces are marketed at at least in New York City.

I'm thinking a lot about this because I'm just going to a bunch of them for the bit, because I love doing that for research and seeing how people are treating themselves in their body in different ways.

Because wellness is a cult.

Beauty is a cults in itself, so I want to see all the little cults and how they're hanging out and what they're doing and chatting about.

So for men, I feel like it's really marketed in terms of like almost like Terminator is on the mood board.

Oh my god, what I mean.

It's so like we're in tron We're going to do an AI robot massage.

We're going to get our like body scanned so we see every single thing that possibly be wrong with us.

Optimize, Optimize.

Yeah, We're going to.

Do like ivy infusions.

We're going to do all these things and make us feel like we're in a spaceship.

It's about strength.

It's about like being stronger, longer or something.

Maybe, yes, there's this phrase in the book.

I think so like longevity, velocity or something.

At this point, I don't remember exactly, but it has to do with like just trying.

There's like a barometer that's scientists and people that are doing all of this body hacking stuff.

They are obsessed with statistically trying to make sure that you live a little longer, and all of this stuff is just for that effort, whereas all of the stuff that's thrown that women for anti aging is really just about like fake your age to be younger, remove and erased parts of yourself so you give an idea of being younger than you are.

Your health kind of doesn't matter in these conversations.

Right at all.

It doesn't even matter if it's a dangerous surgery, Like no, bbl's are so dangerous, and people are like, gotta get that fat ass babe, Like it.

Just I'm attempted and I haven't been yet.

I mean, I have fake boobs, Like it's a whole I was telling Lola, getting my fake boobs was the happiest experience of my life.

So like it's just a complicated subject because I also am like people shouldn't have to change, and then I'm like, but I want to.

Yeah, it's tough.

Yeah it could be a playground or it could be a prison, and sometimes it's both at the same time.

You there it is, that's why you're the expert.

That's exactly what's happening.

Yes, exactly.

Well, speaking of prison, the prison of beauty, I mean, so you did talk about on another podcast, which is I think how we came across you in the first place, the connection between Mormonism and plastic surgery.

And as someone who was raised Mormon, this was very surprising to me.

And I don't know how.

Deep any of y'all have gotten into this, but like when I was growing up, you could not get your ears pierced, you could not get tattoos, nobody got plastic surgery because your body is a temple, and like if somebody did, they really would try to hide it.

It was not something that was normal or acceptable.

And I started asking around about how that's changed.

But can you tell us some of them a little bit about that, because it's changed a lot.

It's changed a lot, it has.

I mean when I was just lightly doing the research about Mormonism and plastic surgery and self cared body stuff, I was really surprised that people are spending a lot, a lot of money to do that, and it's so kind of related to the paradynamics of being in the church and how much money people are spending to kind of align themselves with a very new, kind of off topic version of grace and values that seem antithetical, as you said, to like what it might have been before.

I mean, now there's Real Housewives situations going on on Hulu where you have Mormonism kind of funneled through the lens of a Kardashian right, right.

And I'm sure for a lot of people that doesn't feel like the religion that they might have grown up in.

Yeah.

And I was asking some friends and family members because I was like, is this are you guys noticing this is happening in your communities?

And it seems like it's definitely more prevalent in Utah specifically than to Mormon culture.

Outside of Utah.

It seems to be the consensus.

But my Salt Lake friends.

Were like, oh, yeah, Utah in general has those plastic surgeons besides Miami and Los Angeles?

Is that correct?

Yeah?

Yeah, outside of Brazil, it's like one of the capitals of plastic surgery in the world.

It's fascinating that the religion of don't drink coffee or tea because that will because your body's a temple is now, Like, but boob jobs are great, and in fact, do everything you can.

To be beautiful for God.

Yeah.

Yeah, but of course obviously there's a patriarchal element, you know, like your kind of role as a woman in Mormonism is to be presentable to your husband or your future husband to bear children.

Like, have you gained any insight into some of the thinking that goes on there?

I think what I've observed from across different religions that are also they have like a patriarchal lens through which they view women is that you're kind of a commodity for God, and it is in your best interest and in God's best interest or higher powers best interest if you do this, that and the other thing.

And if you don't, you don't love the higher power quite enough.

You haven't sacrificed yourself enough to transform to be closer to the vision.

Wow, Okay, it's a ritual.

Yeah, but who determines what is Like the dudes, dude in each community, the men in each community are like, this is what God likes.

But it's so fascinating because like if you look at the FLDS, like that's the app like, yeah, no makeup.

Yeah, but I remember one of the women saying, and I don't remember where, but like Thinness was very stressed for in her family in which family and her FLDS family.

Oh, I mean that might be true, but it's not everywhere.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean one of the things I think we can all kind of clock is that just because testimony or like the actual primary source materials say one thing, it doesn't mean that any specific like church or organization is exactly following, of course, the rich in guidance.

Of course.

The other day I just saw that like some church had created an AI voice of Charlie Kirk around it.

Yeah, and they were having like group hallucinations about like Charlie Kirk giving some sermon for the church, and it was just an AI voice, you know.

So I'm like, we love a lot.

Quite aggressively, quite aggressively, we have lost the plat well.

I mean, yeah, Christianity and America has taken a gone way far from the Bible in many cases Evangelical Christianity.

M hm.

I like the history you explored in this book of how far back beauty and power and politics have intersected, and just you know, beauty attracts power, it attracts political power, and so it is it might be painted as something silly, but actually it is kind of an end to a sort of power that women aren't really granted otherwise.

So I don't know if there's a question in that, but I would love for you to expand upon that a bet.

Sure.

I tend to qualify beauty as a form of like soft power, and soft power is technically a term in like political theory and strategy about like it's it's the things that you might do, or the conversations that you might have, and these ways of finessing a situation in order to impact real change.

Right, you don't need to be physically violent or threatening to get something done.

And oftentimes women are not afforded actual weapons or other tools or financial means in order to get things done.

But that doesn't mean that they aren't the most important person in the room.

Right.

There's like that quote like behind every powerful man is a woman, you know, And beauty has always been kind of an exitdoor, a loophole, a way of having some sort of currency in a world that wants to constantly discredit women.

And that's not just true in beauty, it's really true in how money and aesthetics are intertwined overall.

I mean the art world specifically.

It's all about aesthetics and beauty, right, But it's also a commodity in which really wealthy people move their money around on a global scale, and it's often a front for more serious conversations and bargains, and that has so much to do with beauty, politics, currency, and soft power.

In these conversations, it's like, oh, it's a beautiful thing, but I also want this person to do something for me, so I'm going to buy their stuff or this, that and the other thing.

But in terms of just the beauty industry and power and currency, the beauty industry financially is one of the most significant industries in the world, and it's connected to other industry that we use every single day.

Right.

It's connected to shipping.

It's connected to like boxing and shipping supplies and materials.

It's connected to retail spaces.

It's an industry where you can work as a service worker, you can work retail.

You might be a makeup artist, you might be a model.

There's so many different careers within the industry, and for a lot of women for generations, working in the beauty industry was the only way that they could actually make money right Financially, women were needed allowed to have credit cards in their own bank accounts until like, you know, the mid nineteen hundreds, like the fifties or so.

I might be wrong about that, but it was.

It's within it's within the living memory, right within living memory, and so beauty has often been one of the only ways that women could actually find financial agency and a sort of actual material power in their.

Lives and even in sex work before that.

Yeah.

Yeah, the oldest industry in the world has to do with beauty and desire.

Yeah right, I think that you were talking about this on the podcast that we listen to.

But you know, I've even started to think this way.

I'm ashamed to admit, but like, I need to budget my life differently because I'm going to need a facelift.

And then once you start getting that work done, your retirement might go back a couple of years, and then you also look younger, so maybe you can stand spaces for longer and keep working.

And it's like a bigger conversation that has really serious repercussions that we're beginning to see more.

I think, yeah, I think it's a really pragmatic way of looking at the realities of capitalism honestly, Like, yes, it's depressing, but it's also just realistic about how beauty and agism and how men treat women that are older.

That all factors into pretty privilege and you know, career opportunities at any age.

So yeah, I get while you're thinking that way, it's the industry is kind of meant for you, shaped itself for you to do that.

I mean, and it makes me think about cultures outside of Utah.

In Utah, it seems like it kind of like started and then everyone else was doing it, and then everyone was like, well, if they're doing it, I have to do it because I have to keep up.

Are facelifts on the rise overall and or happening younger?

Do we know?

I think they are happening younger.

The type of facelifts that are popular now are different than they were maybe five or ten years ago.

The trends and the micro trends of what kind of things you're getting that has changed, and more and more people are getting things younger but they might not be as permanent because you can get facial threads right, which is not you know, it's like a different form of alteration and it's not a traditional facelift the way that we've potentually thought about it.

And I've been in group chats with you know, gen z girlies that are financially like having me to do whatever they want, and I remember they asked me for facial threading places and I thought they meant like hair like eyebrass, right, because understandably that's more affordable for most people, because like that might cost like twenty dollars and a lot of this day, I was like, oh, well, I go here, here, here, and they're like, no, we want facial threads.

Wow.

And I was like, you're twenty two.

Your face is that's highest it's ever gonna be.

I started getting botox when I was eighteen eighteen, and I don't really anymore because I can't.

It's very expensive.

But yeah, I had access to somebody who was like willing to do some experimenting and I was like, hand up, every wrinkle in my four head gone, and I was like, in high school.

Okay, I hear that, and I raise you My friend has a daughter who is I believe six, Oh god, she and her friends have gotten TikTok brained and are trying to use like retinal products.

I'm like, you don't understand, Oh no, you're a baby.

Like they're not obviously lending them, but like they're seeing these in their feet.

And thinking that they need to do that, and their babies so crazy.

It's quite depressing.

And I'm really just genuinely waiting for Sephora specifically to roll out a children's wing, yeah, because.

It's unbearable to go there and now as an adult, because it's just all kids.

I'm waiting for them.

I'm waiting for them to roll out the baby face left.

That's what I want to see, just in a bottle, just like yeah, yeah, I want to see a baby with like that surgery.

Coming up on the New Children's program.

Yeah, I mean yeah.

Our perception of what is normal and what is human is just becoming skewed, and I imagine that's only going to keep happening and keep getting more and more uncanny over time.

Speaks speaking as someone who has botox and filler and I've done peels.

Yeah, oh yeah, you love the peels.

Well it wos are great, Yeah, should that's yeah, they're so.

I mean she can handle more than me.

I put one on and.

Was like, get it off of me.

But it's just it's an endless cycle that can really take all of your money and all of your brain power and completely hijack your thoughts and your agency as a human being on this planet who should be maybe thinking about other things.

That's been my experience.

Yeah, I see I see.

It happening among people I know, and sometimes I myself as well, where like we feel really out of control in this like healthscape world that we're living in and country, and so the easiest thing to turn to to feel a sense of control again is our own bodies.

And we've talked about that in terms of like eating disorders and the connections that eating disorders often have to cults, but I think it also very much rears its head in the form of like do I get the surgery, do I get the surgery?

How much filler do I need?

How much dissolver do I need?

Did I do too much?

You know, it's just this like obsessive sort of mind consuming thing.

I mean, we're really sucking at having actual questions today, But if you have any say on.

That, Yeah, I'm like, do you mind just framing your book into a list of questions for us that relate to cults because we read it, we loved it, but we can't talk today.

No, It's totally fine because like the overarching vibe that you understand about it is that beauty is a cult and there's just little sex within it, right, And the idea of the constant self correction and the self the constant self policing is something that anyone in the beauty industry, where like considers themselves a beauty girly, experiences and it's the same policing and surveillance that people and cults experience on a day to day basis.

You just fill in the blanks a little differently, right, That's ultimately what it is.

And I think in order to be able to find a sense of peace and love within yourself and be able to pause on doing things or going into debt, you really have to find a sense of self removed from other people's desires or expectations or like the idea of a higher power and what they might want out of you.

It's really just like looking yourself in the mirror and being like is this enough for me today?

And if you can't reach that, you are doomed, right, And it's not a constant state of being, Like on one day I might be like, I am the hottest bit alive correct, And another day I might be like, if I don't get a facial with extractions and my eyebrow's done and maybe a two hour massage, I'm going to lose my mind.

And both of those versions of me are true, and they're the same person.

It's just the target.

And my balance between these two planes is always changing.

And I think when it comes to the cult of beauty, a lot of people get lost at sea because they can't find a sense of gravity within themselves that doesn't ask for someone else to love them unconditionally.

It has so much to do with like is it enough for me to be myself today?

And what does that mean?

If I don't have the answer?

Or the answer scares me.

That is a scary place to be.

Yeah, I mean, irrelevance is terrifying.

And I think we live in a society that really teaches us that that's what will happen if we are not perceived in a way that conveys beauty.

And it is something that does happen.

Yeah, then no, it does.

Yeah.

I mean many people will talk about how they became invisible once they got a little older and it started to show, or if they gained weight beyond what was considered societally desirable.

It's such a tough thing because like we don't want to rely on external validation of course, because we need a centered self, but also like we do need humans and connection and like, yeah, to feel you know, confident, and like it's such a tough balance to strike sometimes.

No, I totally agree, And I think so much of finding the balance is finding people that aren't in competition with you, and that aren't perhaps drowning in quite the same way, like people that are actually physically drowning.

When you try to rescue them, oftentimes they'll drown you too, right, And I think that if you surround yourself with people that are deeply insecure to the point where they're wondering why you aren't insecure as well, it becomes infectious.

Yeah.

I've experienced that, I am.

Yeah, So for me, what's at least helped me, like navigating being so deep in a beauty and fashion spaces for all of my life, and in this book is finding people that are not within it to be my closest confidants in my friends, because they can pull me out of the absurdity of the of my daily life.

Because I mean, I know, I have a very lucky and random, specific life, and things in the beauty and fashion spaces that feel normal or are daily occurrence to me are often once in a lifetime experiences for other people.

And when I can surround myself with people that are removed from these spaces, I can understand how rare and absurd it can be.

And I don't have to take it.

It doesn't become a competition, it doesn't become a fomo.

If I miss a party or whatever, it's like, oh yeah, my life is bizarre.

I should touch grass and understand that this is not all there is.

Which going to draw the connection to cults as well, because so many stories of people sort of emerging from indoctrination have to do with getting a little bit of time outside of the group or a little bit of time talking to someone else and get just like getting a little bit of breathing room, an outside perspective that starts to wake them up, and I can imagine being surrounded by beauty professionals all the time that would just start to feel like that for sure.

Oh totally.

I mean, yeah, Well, what I'm hearing is that, you know, the cult leader kind of becomes the ener critic in your head, and you're nodding for the listeners who might might not see you.

So I think you agree, yes, And then kind of influencers and celebrities become the cult leader above.

That, and then brands that.

They're all acquire.

Yeah, yeah, they require a beautiful choir, but but really the most dangerous one is that kind of enner cult leader that becomes internalized from the absurd things we're seeing in the world right now.

Totally.

I think all of the aura of influencer culture online and all of the money spent by brands to stay relevant and get you problems for them to fix for us, and the relationship between them, like the politics and the vibes outside of the industry, they all kind of converge to become every single bad thing you've ever thought about yourself right in your head.

Yeah, and a lot of us can never escape it because we're all addicted to our phones.

Right, what are you talking about?

I don't have seven hours a day online, right exactly.

I'm like, I don't need to know.

Don't tell me.

I know how bad it is.

It's getting so much words too.

Yeah, and like the filters like little kids just wanting to filters that are on their phone, like recipe for disaster.

I know.

Yeah.

Like, in all of your work researching and writing and working in this space, like, have you noticed anything particularly cult like about how brands operate?

Is there what's going on at the like company level.

I don't know if I can talk about the inner workings of the corporations, because one, they're extremely litigious, and too they don't let me know most things.

You know I'm talking about them.

But I would say that the way that they conduct brand trips, let's talk about that.

So brand trips, at least for fashion and beauty brands, they spend a lot of money per trip, and they choose their favored influencers.

They usually have more than a quarter million followers to get on a trip, usually a million plus.

They choose their chosen few.

They bring them to a deserted, isolated space, usually first class or sometimes private jet style and then they give them a couple of days surrounded by products and anything they could ever want in a villa, and they're expected to post about it constantly.

That kind of is just like a religious retreats.

Sometimes oftentimes they actually go to spiritual or wellness retreat spaces, you know, and they just sprinkle their products around.

I've been on a couple of these fancy brand trips before, and they're really fun, but they're also extremely insular, and there's certain expectations that come with agreeing to go on one, and your appearance and activities are highly monitored and surveyed the entire time you're on this on.

These trips, like if you're not posting enough, like is that oh yeah, oh wow?

Yeah, And they may not confront you directly, but you'll get an email like from someone like two steps of people between you, so everyone will have understood that this is happening, but they will never say to your face, but yeah, it's a very regimented, high expectation situation.

And I mean, in some ways I get it because they may have spent forty thousand dollars a person to get you there, so they expect at least that much in terms of their social numbers from you specifically, but it is very much we're taking you, we're isolating you, or we have demands.

Wow, I mean I would do it.

And they've been fun.

Like meth building around a brand, you know, and that's always fascinating to me because it's so similar to what cults do and oh.

Yeah, it's it's just the parallels.

Yeah, speaking of that, I mean, can you talk a little bit about your essay on the Chanel brand and the history there and how much that's been sort of cleaned up over time.

Of course, they actually just did a brand trip to celebration Tioneal number five and a bunch of influencers and editors went to grass to celebrate that, which I find beautifully timed to my book.

Literally, I saw on Instagram like three days ago a bunch of people that I that I know, acquaintances wise, they're all there, and I'm like, what a small world.

But basically, the origin story of the House of Beauty was really it came out of my obsession with Chanelle number five and the history of Coco Chanel and the elephant in the room of every biography about her that yes, she was an incredible fashion designer that changed how women dressed.

But she was also a spy for the Nazis and had a code name, and was a violently anti Semitic human being.

And that's all documented by people that worked in fashion and were familiar with her, And she spent a lot of her personal money funding anti Semitic propaganda papers and going out of her way to make the lives of a lot of Jewish people and people more vulnerable than her harder to live during World War Two.

That of course is not in any of the biographies, right, but it's also so important to the story of how Chanelle number five still exists today because the people that funded her perfume brand were and still are a Jewish family, and during World War Two she actively tried to have the company rianized and returned to her while they had fled Europe because they were afraid of being put into concentration camps.

My gosh, it's a very important part of the brand history to kind of sweep under the rug the brand owes itself to its history and the people that kind of went out of their way to make sure the brand existed in spite of her anti semitism.

I like how nuanced you made it in the book, where you were kind of saying, like, you know, you wanted to just hate her and judge her, but you kind of understood was it the Rits she was staying at.

Yeah, she was a Rits Gurly rets.

Curly, and you went there and saw the majesty.

I was wondering if you could just say a bit about that.

Of course, so let me set the scene.

I flew to Paris fresh off of the first election for the current man, and in the airports there were still, you know, protests happening, like the taxis were on strike in JFK when I was flying into Paris, so it was very much feeling like the end of the world was specifically happening that day.

And I was staying on the couch of one of my friends who's a fashion editor in Japan now, but she has a place in Paris, and we ended up having dinner at the Ritz with some global supermodel, the head of some model agency, some other people important fashion people that probably have no idea who I am.

And I was walking through the hallways overhearing all of these conversations with people to staying at the Writs talking about politics, but in a way that's like let them eat cake.

Almost Meanwhile, I was texting friends being like, do you have your lawyer's number written in sharp beyond your hand?

Do you stail money?

N how is your green card status going?

Do you know the best way to wash out your eyes from riot spray?

Like?

These are the conversations I was having on my phone while I was overhearing conversations with people that couldn't necessarily afford to stay at the writs at any point in time.

And I think what is so alluring about being in these spaces for a lot of people is like the ease of luxury that luxury likes to give.

It's a frictionalist experience.

You don't actually ever have to think about harm if you can afford to stay in them, because you're protected from it.

There's bodyguards, there's security, there's sometimes no windows to the outside space, and it's all about you, how to serve you.

It is a dreamland for a narcissist with power, and that is ultimately what people with a lot of privilege and money are sometimes.

But being in there, I understood how easy it is to want to stay because fundamentally a very beautiful place, incredible atmosphere.

They are there specifically to serve you.

And when you are terrified of losing control and you have a lot of power and prestige, control is an aphrodisiac that you would rather harm someone than to ever give up.

And understanding that makes me understand a lot about her, even if knowing that I can understand her makes me like myself a little less because of course I wanted to go there be disgusted by everything, be like, ugh, what a heartless woman?

Like yeah, she might be heartless even when she clearly loved people, like the people in her life, but she wasn't deranged.

She knew what she was doing.

I just don't agree with what she did, and I don't agree with a lot of people.

That doesn't make them crazy.

It just means that we have different moral compasses.

So yeah, I mean I completely relate to this, like friction of feeling connected to ideas about capitalism being harmful and wanting to you know, make the world better, and like a lot of that has to do with confronting you know, excessive wealth.

And then at the same time, like I love a beautiful house, you know, like I just am dying to live in a beautiful house, you know.

That's like, and when I'm somewhere there where it's like everything's nice and luxurious, Like of course, it's like so tempting when you are in spaces like that where you feel protected from the like stresses of understanding reality and understanding some of these systems and like the things that go on, Like, it's much more pleasant of an experience, Like it's very tempting to want to stay there.

It's almost impossible not to.

Yeah, and that's what we have to fight against, you know, because we are, at the end of the day, like just animals.

And yeah, it's a constant battle to be like, I'm going outside of my comfort zone.

I'm going outside of my privilege, I'm going outside of whatever because it's the right fucking thing to do, even though it's not comfortable.

And I'm going to just mention some studies I haven't looked at a long time, so I couldn't tell you what they already studies, But like I've talked a little bit about how like there are studies that show that like wealth can decrease empathy for your fellow man.

But then there are also there's also research that shows that like that can be mitigated by exposure to other people's circumstances.

Like it isn't this like you are automatically evil if you are in these spaces or if you have wealth, but it makes it more likely that you'll be less connected.

And so the work is like, I guess reconnecting or helping people reconnect if you.

Are too far down that road.

Does that make sense?

It does?

And it's also you know, we can see this in how billionaires spend their money, like McKenzie mackenzie X.

You know, she's doing so much work giving away all of the money that from her divorce and she's still richer than she was before.

And when you look at how she's spending her money as a billionaire versus anyone else, you're like, it's so wild that world hunger could be solved.

There is a number on it, and the un actually like gave that number to Elon Musk at one point when he was like, yeah, I can I can spend the money on it.

Give me the number.

They gave him the number and he didn't solve it right, He was like, I would act.

She likes to keep these billions thank you, right, And getting clean water to Flint, Michigan is like actually has numbers around it, and that's still not solved.

So wild they would rather buy ultra yachts, you know, or by twitter exactly.

Their whims are at a different scale, and it's about at a certain points, about just whatever makes them happy, not about other people.

And that's fundamentally just like a divide that is very stark and hard to breach.

Yeah.

Yeah, when you were researching the book, were there any particular I mean, obviously you probably knew a great deal about a lot of these processes before, but was there anything in particular you learned about, like the production of beauty products that was particularly dark Because I'm just going to set it up for listeners, Like the way that they write about some of the sourcing of materials and shipping is all first per from the perspective of like the material or whoever happens to be there in that part of the process.

I never thought that I would be engaged in the journey of like an ingredient, Like I never thought I'd be like, Ooh, what's happening with this ingredient?

It's very literary and engaging, but Yeah, is there anything in particular that you learned that you were sort.

Of shocked by?

I mean, that whole chapter that Choose your Own disaster chapter was also a learning experience for me.

I spent almost a year just interviewing people from every aspect of the industry around the world about what they do in their jobs.

And some of it was quite tragic, and some of it was really cool, and so much of it was just a cloud of bureaucracy.

But what I really found so interesting and made it into a couple of pages of that chapter had to do with people that work on shipping container ships and also the hostage negotiators that deal with shipping containers being taken by pirates and modern day piracy, which is kind of mentioned in the book as like a juicy footnote or as like one of the pages.

But there are still modern pirates today, and they make a lot of money just by hopping onto a ship and calling up a conglomerate being like, hey, do you want your ship back?

Wow?

And they may not violently harm anybody, but they are just going to stop it from going anywhere, and every single day and every single hour a ship does not make it support every single conglomerate that has ordered space on that ship loses money.

And these companies are spending lots and lots of money and more and more every single year because of climate crisis and global warming and strikes and this and the other thing to get ships to move around.

The tariff situation that we are experiencing now is totally like intertwined with the ports and piracy.

And just like these conversations, everything costs a lot of money because of political decisions, and pirates are great at taking advantage of that and making every decision really expensive.

So I thought that was really fun.

I wanted to be a pirate.

Yeah, sorry, this is not pirate apologism, but I did think it was really cool because the negotiators they have to know like half a dozen languages, the languages right on call, Like their schedules are like a.

Spy maritime law.

Yeah, I love you said a quote in the book you said, beauty is only worth keeping if it is focused on people, not things.

Can you tell us kind of where you were going with that and what that means for the future of beauty and how we can keep beauty.

So I think a lot of conversations that we have around the beauty industry have to do with the products we buy in order to look a different way or to fix something about ourselves.

And for me, my favorite parts of beauty culture have so little to do with the products involved.

But it's more about the connections I'm making with the other people in the room that might be teaching me a technique or complimenting me, or doing something that makes me feel cared for.

Those moments are what make beauty important to me.

It's being able to connect with another person, to share a story, and to find a way to humanize each other.

Right there's no one who will ride for you harder than a girl in a bar bathroom, right Like, she will give you everything, she will give you anything in her bag, she will give you advice, she will give you a hug, and she'll give you her lipstick or something.

And those moments of just like plain generosity and knowledge sharing and research sharing and care that makes beauty worth it to me because those connections are what life is about.

It's like, how do we find better ways to take care of one another?

Beauty is at its best when it's about that, not about the products or things to do to you know, make people like us more.

It's like, I want to know more about you, what you love, what inspires you, what makes you feel curious or spicy and fulfilled?

Like what about you?

Can you tell me that we can share?

And beauty is often that pathway.

Well as something you just said struck me where it's like and that connection needs to be me being curious about you, not me wanting to produce a feeling of you being impressed by me or you being like I love that you got your face left, you know what I mean?

Like it has to be a curious conversation otherwise we'll just get read trapped into the loop of like comparison and yeah.

Yeah, I mean curiosity and comparison can be intertwined, like genuinely, I'm like when one of my friends wants to get a nose job or whatever, we will go into that rabbit hole of like what is the best technique or skill or skilled surgeon who does the type of work that you like, and it becomes more about craft and signatures because like some plastic surgeons do things in a different way, you know, like not every nose job looks the same, and some jobs are legit like works of art.

You're like, how see this vision?

But it's still like about a conversation and transparency and trust and care.

And I don't like to use the word authentic.

I think it's like kind of a meaningless word at this point.

But it's about knowing what you want and knowing what you're willing to provide and give to someone else who might be curious, and having a conversation around that.

And you know, people might keep a bunch of differ things because like they're protective.

And I think the best conversation about beauty really understand it as a crash and a tool of storytelling, and the most productive versions of beauty come from that.

It's like, this is a story we're both involved in.

You and I are the main characters of our lives, but we're part of this bigger story together, So why don't we talk about it as like a group.

And then it's not a cult anymore.

Of course, that made me think of Mary Kay parties growing up.

I was like, what does that make me think of where I've connected with people a beauty Oh Mary Kay party.

Broad experience?

Cool?

Yeah?

Are we missing?

Are we messing any of the parallels?

No?

I mean It's good that you mentioned like Mary Kay parties because like MLMs have been able to frankenstein community conversations into capitalism in a really exploitative way.

So that's its own, its own Pandora's box and the conversation.

So I never want to shout out MLMs, but they are a great example of this intertwined connection between community care and capitalism that we always have to be aware of, and I think we all need better training on how.

To avoid one.

If do you have any like guidelines that you live by when like choosing a product for how to do it ethically or.

You know, just be mindful about our.

Choices, like the red Flags of beauty.

Yeah, sure, So there's one chapter in the book that's just like red flags to avoid or best practices, because I want that to be a chapter people can like flip back into and refer to.

So there's that.

But also I think just doing your research about the kind of values that you really want to prioritize.

Do you super care about being able to recycle the beauty products?

There are certain brands that really prioritize that and having recyclable packaging or reusable stuff.

You can look that up there are certain retailers that kind of are built around certain ethos, like Credo Beauty cares a lot about sustainability and this idea of clean beauty and clean beauty is its own conversation.

But they make sure that their products that they stock don't have this and the other thing.

And they've done a lot of the legwork for the consumer, which is good because honestly, the average consumer shouldn't have to become a PhD or a beauty reporter to buy something.

It should just be easier for everybody.

For me, I think just asking questions and doing your research on who owns a brand, what do they stand for?

That matters to me because I don't want to give my money to someone that actively doesn't want me to have rights.

Right I do have.

I recommend that chapter in the book In general, one of the things you mentioned there was this marketing of natural as good and synthetic as bad and why that is like a marketing binary basically that is frequently not reflective of what is actually good to use or not use.

And that's something that I think intersects with cults a lot, just and the sort of wellness Yeah, yeah, the trust of anything modern, you know.

Totally the pipeline between like using beef tallow and only drinking like thinking like non pasteurized milk is like a thing that you should do, to becoming a trad wife, to being like red pilled, and you know, being in a particular kind of cold, like those are all interconnected.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like this belief that anything that you that you can't make yourself at home is going to poison you.

I saw a video the other day from someone being like, you should make your own sunscreen at home and sunstream causes cancer, and I'm like, you have literally done no research in your entire life, actually, and you will be the one that gets sun cancer because you aren't.

You don't believe in science, right, So there's there's definitely a connection there.

But the people that are often the victims of it would never be open to the science of it.

So it kind of feels doomed sometimes to have these.

Oh sure, well, And I was just going to add something in that chapter woke me up a bit where it's just like these industries lull us to sleep where I'm like, oh, I'm going to buy this green, you know, super natural product off Amazon now.

I've just got in it shipped across the ocean, and a box wasted a shit ton of Like, I just never thought critically enough about that.

Not but how it gets to you think, how it like now has undone.

Any clean, green green whatever, So like my critical thinking was definitely turned off in that area.

So yeah, surprise, surprise.

Now that's why local products are so much more expensive in comparison, right, because the offset that Amazon can afford to create makes it seem like convenience is so cheap, but it's actually very expensive.

We're just not paying for the cost up front.

The cost is climate crisis, right, It's not numerical to us yet, but when you know, systems begin to collapse or people pass out in warehouses, that is the cost.

But we're not paying it as consumers.

So yeah.

The deforestation stuff also very very vibe.

Sorry, yeah, it's very it's very depressing.

But I also beautifully written and I opening in a way that I think is important.

And yeah, I am hopeful.

You said you you thought the book would be crueler, and it wasn't.

You know, there's some hard stuff to read, but at the end of the day, I come away hopeful and wanting to go brush my friend's hair and give each other manicures and connect with people.

So thank you.

Good that was the point.

I'm glad that that was what you took away from it.

Where can people find you?

Where can they find your book?

You can find the House of Beauty pretty much wherever books are sold in the US, like Barnes, Noble Bookshop dot org, your local indie bookstore.

There are two bookstores in the United States that have scented bookmarks and signed pre orders, and those are Skylight Books in LA and books are Magic in New York, so you can get fancier copies there.

But yeah, you can just google it online, find it and ideally join me for one of the book events across the country that are happening in October and November.

Amazing And did you did you give your Instagram handle or do you have a handle you want to give?

I do?

Yeah, so I'm parentally online and my handle is the same everywhere.

So you could find me on Instagram our Belscarti or on Substackarbelsacardi substack dot com.

You know, say hi, send me a pick of the book if you buy it.

Sick awesome.

Thank you so much.

Yes, thank you for joining us, thank you for having me.

So that was a fascinating episode.

I think we both know that we are in the culs of beauty for the long run.

Yeah, it's just kind of what it is, we reflected.

At least we're aware of it, aware, we're aware about it.

It's there for sure, for sure.

So uh.

One of the things that really struck me about beauty being a cult that haddn't before I read this book is just the moving goalpost of beauty and how you said it in the episode, like some of the most beautiful women you've ever met still don't feel beautiful because it's like you, you can never actually achieve it.

It has to be like an inner knowing beyond physicality, because the goalpost does always move every second, and you never reach your destination.

Maybe you do for like a year, but and even then though, like there's there's so many types of beauty.

So yeah, even if we're like, even if you achieve maximum beauty as one type of beauty, then you're still going to meet someone who's maximum beauty a different type of beauty.

And that's going to make you feel insecure.

If you are insecure, correct.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it's.

Like I'm definitely going, like, my type of beauty is like goth, like right, you know, girl who gets cast as the bitchy friend all the time.

Like that's my particular type of beauty.

And sometimes I'm like, but I should have maximum beauty as you know, someone with long.

Blonde hair and like atoned abs and I was not.

Yeah, yeah, I mean it definitely opens so many paths to like I'm just gonna call what you're saying envy.

I relate.

I have it as well, you know, but like it opens so many paths for women to.

Be pitted against each other.

It gives the voliabilities and it totally undermines a big part of how we could be coming together.

So I love her point that beauty.

Should be in the connection and like and yeah, and our connection to ourselves.

And it's okay if other people are beautiful, that's so we're all people, you know.

Yeah, Like I don't know.

That's something that I think growing older has become easier and easier to acknowledge and like it's such a better place to be.

Yeah, like, yeah, you're all so beautiful and that's great.

I love that for for you, for all of us, and the end.

If you don't care about beauty, well then that's great too.

Is that something normal to say?

Also, beauty is not the most important thing.

Yeah, exactly.

It's like a cherry on top.

Yeah.

You know.

One time I was at a party and a famous woman who was much older than me, I walked up and she was like, Wow, you're so beautiful, which was very nice.

And she was like, but I'm sure it's just the cherry on top.

Oh, And I was like, oh, okay, and I don't know.

Yeah, now I want to know who it is.

I'll tell you later.

Okay.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of Trust Me.

We can't wait to see you again next week, and as always, remember to follow your gut, watch out for red flags, and never.

Ever trust me I mine.

This has been an exactly right production hosted by.

Me Lola Blanc and Me Megan Elizabeth.

Our senior producer is Gee Holly.

This episode was mixed by John Bradley.

Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain, and our guest booker is Patrick Kottner.

Our theme song was composed by Holly amber Church.

Trust Me as Executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia hart Stark, and Danielle Kramer.

You can find us on Instagram at trust Me Podcast or on TikTok at trust Me Cult Podcast.

Got your own story about cults, extreme belief, our manipulation, Shoot us an email at trustmepodat gmail dot com.

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